You can turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 17, beginning in verse 20. Imagine yourself living in our world, only it is dramatically different from the way it is now. A time of tremendous general blessing. So a great frustration to all news reporters who make their capital giving you lots and lots of bad news. There won't be bad news to report on the news. a time of general blessing like never before in the history of the world and that includes the paradise in the Garden of Eden. Poverty and hunger, sickness and death will be greatly reduced. No more TV ads about medicine, because very few people on earth are sick. In fact, if there is TV at all, it will be filled with programming relating biblical preaching and teaching, reenactments of biblical events that are all accurate to the Bible. That would be a new thing. Fireside chats with the Messiah himself. Commercials, if there are commercials, every single one will tell the absolute truth. World peace will bring unprecedented material prosperity. The arts, righteous arts, will flourish. World cultures will reflect the biblical standard of right and wrong. Hate and abuse will not be tolerated. sexual immorality, moral impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, which is hatred, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, Paul said, This will all be replaced with moral purity and chastity, the worship of the true God only, loving relationships, gladness in each other, sobriety. In other words, the works of the flesh will be largely replaced by love and joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. You don't need to have anger management classes. Society itself is resistant to typical expressions of unrighteous anger. Though there still will be sinners in the world, their presence and their effect will be diluted by the presence both of glorified saints living on the earth and the presence of the Messiah himself. ruling with a rod of iron from the world capital in Jerusalem. Work will once again be a joy and blessing because every effect of sin on the environment will be gone. Equity in society will reign supreme. Pay will be fair and ample. Business will operate with complete intolerance of greed or vice. Politicians as we know them will be something children will study as an oddity from the past. Democracy will be replaced with a benevolent monarchy as cannot even be imagined. It is so benevolent. Life will be for joy and singing. And this is not the mockery of world peace offered by the nicely dressed Kingdom Hall representatives knocking on your front door. or the men in black latter-day non-saints promising Joseph Smith's dream of paradise. These are the promises of an infallible and sovereign God who sent His only Son to save us by having Him die on the cross in our place and paying the penalty that our sins deserve. These are His promises. the one who created everything we enjoy, His promises, the one who every single moment keeps in His power and control the breath of every single human being, the life of all the people who have ever populated this world. Our passage in Luke 17 deals with the kingdom of God. The one that already is here, that's the one we are participating in together when we meet here on the Lord's Day to worship our heavenly Father. Because He has given to us the right to be called the children of God. It is not we ourselves who have earned this right by our good behavior. It is our Savior who, after He forgave our sins on His own behalf, then gave us His perfect righteousness so that we stand complete in Him before a righteous God. Let's begin in verse 20. I've entitled this first part, Jesus Answers the Pharisees About the Coming Kingdom. It says in verse 20, being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, the kingdom of God is not coming. In ways that can be observed, nor will they say, Jesus said, look, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. You notice that in verse 20 and in verse 22, Jesus is talking to different people. Who is he talking to in verse 20? We just read this. He's talking to the Pharisees. Who's he talking to in verse 22? His disciples. And there's our division, very unequal. Jesus answering the Pharisees about the coming kingdom in verses 20 and 21, and Jesus explaining the coming kingdom to his disciples in verses 22 all the way down through 37. In our first section, the Pharisees asked, when's it going to come? There are three things here that we need to understand. The first one is, what is the kingdom of God? The second one is, what did the Pharisees think the kingdom of God was when they asked Jesus, when is it coming? And number three, What's Jesus' answer? What is the kingdom of God and when is it coming? Question number one, what is the kingdom of God in the simplest terms? It is God being king. Isn't that great? You can come to Bible school and learn that kind of thing. If you join us during the week for classes Let me put it a bit of a different way in simplest terms. The Kingdom of God is the nature of God's relationship with mankind at various times in human history. Scripture describes for us five separate stages or aspects of the kingdom of God. The first is God's earthly kingdom in the Garden of Eden. We would call it paradise. The second one is what we call the theocratic kingdom. That long $64 word just means when God reigned over Israel. And we're describing the entire history of Israel from Genesis chapter 12, when the Lord chose Abraham and through him a great-grandson Judah, and through Judah all of the kings of Israel, all the way until he brought them back into the land and finished talking to them in Malachi. Genesis chapter 12, all the way to the book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament. The third aspect or stage of the kingdom we'll call the spiritual kingdom. It is something the Pharisees were totally ignorant of. They had no idea there was a stage three. This is the kingdom of God in the hearts of those who believe the gospel, and as a result, Jesus is king of their lives, our lives. This is the kingdom of which we are a part today, oftentimes called the church. Number four, the millennial kingdom of Christ, the future 1,000-year reign of the Lord on earth, when God fulfills every single promise that He made to Abraham and his descendants. And then finally, number five, the heavenly kingdom in eternity. And you'll notice as we go through the scriptures, as you read in your devotions, you'll notice that the word kingdom is used to refer to each of these different aspects of God's kingdom. There are two things about these stages I want to mention. Each one was the next step in improvement toward the ultimate heavenly kingdom of God. Number two, in every aspect of the kingdom, it is always God's kingdom. God never puts himself on an equal footing with mankind. His created mankind, he is always the king. That's why it's always called the kingdom of God. This brings us to our second question. That's what the kingdom of God is. It could be any one of these five, but in our passage, we're really only talking about two. Number three, the spiritual kingdom, and number four, What I've called the millennial kingdom. We'll talk more about how these present themselves in just a few minutes, but let's get on to question two. What did the Pharisees mean by the kingdom of God when they asked Jesus this question in verse 20? Well, like many of the Jews, the Pharisees believed that the kingdom of God, which they would call the kingdom of heaven, you'll notice this especially in Matthew's gospel because Matthew was writing his gospel to the Jews, so he doesn't use the expression kingdom of God. He uses that Jewish expression, the kingdom of heaven. They viewed this as such an enormous change to human society that it would be attended with great heavenly signs. One man put these words in the mouth of the Pharisees to help us understand what they were asking Jesus on this occasion. Would you openly admit that you are the Messiah, bringing the kingdom and thus making yourself an enemy of Rome? This is how they saw the kingdom. You admitting that you're the Messiah, you making yourself an enemy of Rome, would you affirm the signs and wonders of what was then contemporary apocalyptic writings? In other words, writings about the last time. Well, their idea of the kingdom is not any one of the five. Their idea of the kingdom was something of their own making. They knew that Jesus was extraordinary, They admit that his public ministry was extraordinary. In fact, several times, we just saw this a couple of weeks ago. They said that this man has performed many miracles we cannot deny, but we must stop him from doing that. I don't know why you'd want to do that, but they were so hardened against him. They were determined to stop him no matter who he was. even if he was God. Though his ministry was extraordinary, the Pharisees thought he was far too subdued for them to believe that he was actually their messianic king and that he had come to earth to move from stage two straight through three to stage four. Not the real millennium, but the Judaized view of a millennial kingdom. They didn't have a clue that there would be a stage three, that they, the Pharisees, we can just hear them, don't you know who I am? And we would need to answer them honestly, no. And in fact, it doesn't make any difference. You are a sinner who needs to repent and get saved. They certainly didn't think that. So this they rejected, and they asked, when will the kingdom of God, the real kingdom of God, come? But in fact, the irony is the real kingdom of God was standing right in front of them. The king was there. That leads us to our third question, when does the kingdom of God come according to Jesus? His answer begins with the negative. The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed. You want apocalyptic signs? You want a bloody moon? You want the sun blotted out? You want all kinds of astronomical phenomena to mark the arrival of the Son of God? That's not coming. Your idea of what that is, is not coming. Some will go hunting for the kingdom of God and they'll come back and they'll report that they found it here or there, but you don't need to wonder where it is. Why not? For behold, the kingdom of God is right in the middle of you, standing here. And He is the King. Now, they should have known. He had just healed ten lepers. None of them could do that. He had just raised Lazarus from the dead. This is what they were so upset for. They couldn't do that. He had raised two others from the dead. He had healed thousands upon thousands of people. They could not do that. So what did Jesus say to the Pharisees about the coming kingdom? It's not coming. Not the way you expected. It's not coming. It's already here. And you know the marvelous thing, folks, is that where two or three are gathered, and I'm pretty sure there are more than that here, there is He in the midst. We are not meeting just with other human beings. That's not a compliment to you. That just means there is another here, and he is the God who is king. And this is an example of his kingdom now in the world. Early on June the 7th, 1942, a small nondescript fishing boat named the Bon Ami slipped out of the harbor at Virginia Beach, put out its nets, and began fishing. At least, that's what it looked like they were doing. Along the east coast of the United States, Hitler's U-boats had been wreaking havoc with American support vessels, sinking them, easily two to three ships every week along the east coast. This was seriously hindering the American support for Allied forces, desperate for an effective way to stop the U-boats. American naval engineers hit upon the idea of retooling a fishing boat. because the U-boats didn't care about fishing boats. They weren't carrying supplies to the Allies, so they retooled these fishing boats to launch torpedoes. They could hold five of them on the fishing boats they decided to use, and sufficient tracking electronics to hunt for the hunters. Before sunset, the first day, the Bon Ami had sunk two U-boats and a third one on the next day. Before September, this was June when it started, before September, there were more than a dozen of these unassuming net-pulling fishing boats. The Germans were nonplussed. They could not understand this. And by the time they did, it was far too late. The interesting thing was, they were just fishing boats. And in the same way, Jesus was not what the Pharisees were expecting in a Messiah. In fact, they completely rejected His claims. They wanted to know when the real kingdom was coming, but the real kingdom was standing in front of them. And maybe you are not a born-again Christian as someone has tried to explain to you the gospel message and you think that just can't be as easy as it is. That's just too unassuming. That's just too plain. Do you think, well, of course I've sinned. You know, everybody's sinned and done wrong. I'm expecting, maybe you're expecting something like an Old Testament captain who expected the prophet to come out and speak some fancy words and hit him on the head and then he'd be healed. But he told him to go to a muddy river and just dip. and all his leprosy would be gone. No, that's too easy. The second part begins in verse 22. Jesus explains to his disciples the coming kingdom. There are three parts to this second part. The Lord's coming will be delayed, verses 22 through 25. The Lord's coming will be unexpected, verses 26 through 30, and the Lord's coming will have to be responded to. And that's part of what I have to do today, is I have to urge you to respond. Not when He comes, that will be too late, but now. Now, before He comes. Notice what Jesus says in verse 22, He said to His disciples, the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, that is, the days in the future when He returns and sets up His earthly kingdom. You will want to see some of those days. And what does He say next? And you will not see it. Why not? It's going to be delayed. You're not going to have part in this. And they will say to you, see he said this up above to the Pharisees. People will come along and they'll say to you, look there, here is the Messiah. Look here, here is the Messiah. And people are doing that today, aren't they? Thousands of Americans thought that Adolf Hitler was the Messiah. Thousands of American Christians thought this nut bar was the Messiah. Is that happening? Yes, absolutely. Look, here. Here he is. No? Jesus says, do not go out and follow them. Well, why not? Is it because the other aspect of the kingdom is here now? No, he gives them a different reason. You see, the interesting thing is he talked to the Pharisees about the present spiritual kingdom of the gospel, but he's going to talk to his disciples about the future aspect of the kingdom we call the Millennium. They had already trusted Christ as Savior. They didn't need to understand that part of the kingdom. They already understood that. Now he's going to talk to them about the future. You notice what he says? Do not go out and follow them. Why not? Verse 24, because as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. It's kind of like asking someone the question, I'm going out on this golf course in a thunderstorm. I want you to tell me, how will I know that I've been struck by lightning? I mean, there must be some way to figure this out. By the way, I did a little background study where I grew up on the East Coast of South Carolina. The state of South Carolina has 378,000 plus lightning strikes a year. The state of Texas has over 4 million every year. That's more than the highest number of lightning strikes in the entire country of Canada in all of the history of keeping track Now, I don't know how you keep track of these things. You ever wonder how they do that? Oh, I saw one. No, I already saw it and counted it. What that means when you grow up in a society like that is, can you remember ever seeing the flash and hearing the bang? And it's not a bang. Oh no, it is a sinew untying crash. That's what it is. You see it and you go, wow, that's close. So when he uses an illustration of lightning, I say, aha, I know that. But for those of you who don't get to see it very much, at night when it flashes, it shines from one end of the horizon to the other end of the horizon. What is Jesus saying? You don't need to ask where he is. It will be obvious to everyone where he is. But first, here's our second phrase, verse 25, first two words, but first, This is the second expression that tells us it's delayed. He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. So right at the beginning, he says, you will not see it. Then in verse 25, but first, stage five of the kingdom of God has to be completed. And we went from stage four to stage five. We moved up to something that's preparing us for glory. When we understand the gospel, we understand the forgiveness of sins, we understand what it's like to bow our head and actually talk to the God of the universe, we will do that for eternity. That will never stop. That is the key to understanding the kingdom of God. Jesus tells his disciples, but first I, the one explaining this to you, must suffer many things. Like what? Like betrayal. Like arrest. like condemnation, not a genuine condemnation, but a false condemnation, and crucifixion for sinners. I must first be rejected by this generation. He came unto His own, and His own did not receive Him. So His coming will be delayed. Second section, verses 26 to 30, His coming will be unexpected, just as it was in the days of Noah. This tells us, beginning in Genesis chapter 6 and going through Genesis 9, we have the whole story of Noah. He says, just like it was for Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. So this is the first of two illustrations of the unexpected nature of the return of Christ. Life was continuing day by day as usual. Eating and marrying both anticipate something afterwards. I'm eating, now I have strength. I can go and I can work. I'm marrying, so now we work together as a couple. We have children. We love each other. We spend our lives together. There's every expectation that things will continue right along, just as we are all here today. And when this service is over, we'll visit with each other and have a good time and walk out and get in our cars. And you fully expect you're going to make it home. You fully expect life will just continue on. But Jesus will come back and they are totally unprepared. I hope there's nobody here who's unprepared. The second illustration comes from the time of Lot. We're still in Genesis. We only move up to Genesis chapter 19. Likewise, verse 28, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. All of those things assume that everything's just gonna continue. Why do we build a building? To leave it and do nothing with it? No, we're gonna use it. Yeah, but what if something happens? I was a pastor for 20 years down in Calgary, and you do funerals. And the folks at this funeral home that we went to, they said, if we have someone who passes away and they don't have a church, but they list their religious affiliation as Baptist, would you come and do their funeral? And I said, sure, I'd be glad to do that. It was only about a week after he asked me that I got a call. Here's this family. The husband passed away. So I went to visit the family, told them how I conducted funerals and so forth. And they said, well, this is really sad. I said, why? And they said, well, for the last eight or nine years, I think it was eight years, he was in his fifties, and he had planned everything out. He spent the last eight years building his dream house on a lake. And he and his wife worked together. The children helped. It was such a great thing that they did. And they moved all the furniture in. And he and his wife had planned to take three weeks off his last year of work so that they could be there. The day before his vacation started, he died of a massive heart attack. Well, it was similar. In Lot's day, they were doing all the normal things, everything continuing on. The people of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim are living life normally, anticipating something after all of these activities. Suddenly judgment came and there was nothing after. And he says the coming of the Son of Man is going to be revealed to the world, and it will be just as unexpected, shocked, not prepared. The third thing about the Lord's coming is in verses 31 and 36, how He describes people's response, not from their standpoint, but from His standpoint. Let the one who's on the housetop with his goods in the house not come down to take them away. And likewise, let the one who's in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife, the first gentleman on his housetop, much as we would be in the backyard standing on the deck. Years ago in 1981, when I was only a young old man, I went on a tour of Egypt. My younger brother went with us, and we were headed up to our hotel in Nazareth, and we see this elderly gentleman on his rooftop. Got a little parapet all the way around it about that high. And here he was in the middle of his rooftop winnowing grain. And I elbowed my brother, and when we let off at the hotel, we ran back down the hill with all our camera gear flying all around. And we stopped and he signaled to us to come out. We didn't recognize a single word. Either he didn't recognize a single word of ours. We certainly didn't recognize a single word of his. He was Arabic, speaking Arabic. And he invited us out to his rooftop. He went through everything he was doing. And so here we were all out there pointing and my brother and I click, click, you know, taking his picture, you know, smile, do this. So he would, you know, his little shovel, he'd give us a grin. We got pictures of him, and this is what he was doing. He was on his rooftop. This is where they spend time when the weather is nice. You go out on your deck, you go out on your back patio. And he said, if at that moment the Son of Man returns, don't go back in your house to get anything. The second gentleman's in the field working. When the son of man returns, let him not turn back into his house. Respond right away. The third person is not a gentleman, but a woman, the wife of Lot, whom we mentioned a few minutes ago. Remember what Lot did? He went out from Sodom. His wife started to, but she could not let go. Let go of what? Her life in Sodom. Her stuff that characterized her life in Sodom. Her little collection of ceramic elephants. She worked hard to make that collection, and now it was going. Everything she had, not the least of which were two daughters, engaged to be married. And she could not walk away from that. And so really the first three illustrations of a response have the same thing in common. Walk away from your life. Leave it behind you. This is what we do when we get saved. I don't need those things to be fulfilled. I can leave them behind. Jesus breaks in on this list of examples with a warning that we saw back in Luke chapter 9. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. This is His lesson for the first three examples. There's a tendency for us to make our lives all about us. Say, no, I love my children. Yeah, they're your children, your life, your family, your job, your collection. If we are willing to let that life go and lose it for Christ's sake, Turn your back on it and come to Jesus for salvation. Then the day Jesus returns, you will have your life to live forever. You will have what you want forever. Life. And life without sin. Then in verses 34 to 36, he concludes this section by showing the results of those who responded to the gospel. Two are in the bed, but only one is ready. Only one is taken. How poignant! If this is a husband and wife, one is converted and one is gone, and the other one can't understand where they are. What's going on here? Did you ever get saved? Well, no, I didn't want to. I wasn't ready. It wasn't the right time. I always had some excuse for not turning to Christ. Well, now it's too late. Some Bibles, we have two women grinding, one of them is taken. Some of the Bibles, you may have one, has a verse 36. Ours doesn't have a verse 36. There were two people out in the field working. One is ready and is taken and the other is not. What a tragic day this will be for those who would not get saved. What is the lesson here? The Lord's coming must be responded to. Are we ready to see Him, to be with Him? If we live our lives day by day, beginning each day with Him, doing what He wants us to by His grace each day, faltering and then bringing our cares and our failures before Him, Father, forgive me. Wash me clean again. Fill me with your spirit. There's work to do, and I want to do it. We have lots of young families here. What a job! You're raising souls for Christ, doing everything you can do to prepare them for eternity. And one day you will be gone. What's the lesson here? We have to respond. Verse 37 concludes our passage. Jesus' disciples, we can just see them, jaw dropped. Where? They don't even get the whole question out. Where? Pharisees, back in verse 20, asked when, and they didn't need to ask. Jesus' disciples ask where, and he says, you don't need to ask. It's gonna be as obvious as turkey buzzards circling in the sky. That's what we always call them, turkey buzzards. They are vultures. They're hideously ugly. You can't tell that from the ground because they're up at about 35,000 feet circling, you know. But I used to go to a plantation where my father was a regular member of the upper echelon in the hunting club. His son got to go there and shoot pretty much anything that moved, so I had a good time walking along the bank shooting snakes. I come around the corner, coming up to the higher part of the causeway, surrounded by trees, and hear about a dozen turkey buzzards. They're almost as tall as me, standing on their feet, you know. I mean, they're not flying. They have their wings folded back, and they're huge. I had no idea they were so big, and they were so intimidating. I just started, ah, ah, ah, ah, backing up. Didn't know what I was going to do, and are they ugly? And there's one thing that attracts them, death. Something dead. I don't know why they landed on that causeway, unless it was me they were expecting to be the next meal. I don't know. But you can always tell where they're circling in the sky. What does that mean? There's something there. And so Jesus is using this as an illustration of the same thing he started with. You don't need to ask when. You will know when. You don't need to ask where, you will know where. So let me finish with just two lessons I want to take away from this passage. The first one is, there is a certain future for this world. It is not going to be determined by terrorists of any kind. It is not going to be determined by madmen and nutbars of any kind. It is going to be determined by the decree of a sovereign God, and it will come when He says, how He says, and why He says. He and He alone is in control of everything. I don't have to worry about coronavirus. Say, what if I die? Well, then obviously God wants you dead. What are you going to do? Argue with Him about that? I mean, there's all kinds of things going on in the world, yes. And isn't it great? I know the One who holds everything in His hand. Isn't that a comfort? Number two, the stage of the kingdom of God we are in right now is the gospel stage when believers urge unbelievers to come to Christ for salvation. If you attend a church that does not teach you that, it is not teaching you truth. Because this is fundamental to what God is doing in the world today. Do not make the mistake of putting off your decision until it's too late. Let's pray. Father, what are we going to say to you? It's not too late right now, Lord, and yet we don't have the ability to turn hearts to you. I pray that you would draw souls to yourself, that your Holy Spirit would give folks no rest, just like you gave us no rest until we came to you. Oh God, I pray that you would help us be expectant about what you have for us in the future and yet always prepared to stay by our duty here in this life and fulfill your will for us here in this life until you call us home. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Be thou my vision, O Buddha,